Retro Tone Ram's Head V2

The Retro Tone Ram's Head V2 is a fuzz pedal from Retro Tone, a French builder that focuses on dirt boxes inspired by vintage circuits. It is the company's take on the Ram's Head Big Muff, specifically the version 2 circuit that Electro-Harmonix sold between 1973 and 1977 and later reissued¹. Where the original is prized for a scooped, bassier sound, Retro Tone adds a toggle that fills in those scooped mids, giving the player two voices from one box¹.

The builder describes the approach as component-level recreation rather than a loose approximation¹:

Retro Tone, quoted by Delicious Audio¹

What the original Ram's Head V2 sounds like

To know what the Retro Tone is chasing, it helps to know what the V2 Big Muff is. The version 2 Muff was produced for a few years from 1973 and picked up the "Ram's Head" nickname from the ram's face printed on the enclosure². Kit Rae, who has documented the Big Muff family in more depth than anyone, describes the V2 as having a very scooped midrange, exceptional sustain and gain on most units, and a fairly tight, controllable low end that creates a huge sound through a tube amp³.

The V2 was not one circuit but a family of them. Rae counts at least twenty variations of the circuit used in V2 Big Muffs, including the Violet Ram's Head variant found in 1973-74 units and in custom-branded Big Muffs like the Foxey Lady, Marveltone Distortion Sustainer and Lyle Distortion Sustainer⁴. His measurements of original units show how much the values drifted: feedback caps moved between 470pF, 560pF and 680pF, clipping caps ranged from .047uF up to 1.0uF, and the tone stack resistors varied from 22k to 39k depending on the unit⁵. That drift is why two original Ram's Heads can sound noticeably different, and why a builder "carefully choosing the components" is making real decisions about which specific variant to recreate.

Stomp Under Foot's Matthew Pasquerella, another maker who has traced the Ram's Head versions, describes the V2 "Blue" variant as evening out some of the extra low end found in V1, resulting in a more balanced voice with smooth, harmonically rich fuzz and violin-like sustain⁶.

The controls

The Retro Tone keeps the classic three-knob Muff layout rather than redesigning it. Delicious Audio's write-up notes that it "offers the same knob layout of the original"¹, which means the familiar Volume / Tone / Sustain arrangement that appears across the Big Muff family and its many recreations⁷.

What the mid boost switch does

The stock Ram's Head circuit scoops the mids, which is a large part of the huge, dark character players associate with it. The trade-off is that a heavily scooped fuzz can disappear behind a band, since guitars live in the midrange. Retro Tone's answer is a 2-position switch that takes you "from a boosted midrange sound to the original sound"¹, so the same pedal covers both the classic scooped voice and a fuller, more forward one.

Other builders in the same territory have solved this in different ways. The Vick Audio Violet Ram's Head uses a three-position toggle for scooped, flat and boosted mids⁸, and the Stomp Under Foot Ultra 47 Ram's Head uses a mids knob with a marked starting point for the classic scoop. Retro Tone's two-position switch is the simplest version of the idea: stock sound, or mids filled in.

How it compares with other Ram's Head recreations

The Ram's Head has been recreated many times, and the Retro Tone sits in a crowded field. The most direct comparison for many players is the official Electro-Harmonix Ram's Head Big Muff Pi reissue, which Kit Rae found "thick and dirty sounding" and an accurate capture of the signature tone of many early to mid 1970s Ram's Heads, though noisy at high gain, as all Big Muffs are⁴. Other options include the Vick Audio 73 Ram's Head, the Buffalo FX Ram's Head, the JHS Pedals '73 Ram's Head Replica Fuzz, the Castledine Electronics V2 and the Stomp Under Foot Ram's Head.

What distinguishes the Retro Tone is the build and the added switch. It is hand assembled in the Basque Country in a wood and aluminum case, carries a 3 year warranty, and includes reverse polarity protection¹, where the official reissue is a mass-produced nano-format pedal. Players comparing circuits rather than build quality will find the Retro Tone targets the same V2 territory as the rest: the scooped, bassier, high-sustain voice that made the original a favorite¹⁴.

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